How often do you look at your assets, such as computers, software, printers, inventory, and included them your balance sheet? Always, I bet. Now consider that your clients, all toll, are worth about $2M of lifetime value and now included on your balance sheet. Where will you spend most of your time and money? Hopefully investing in those assets with the greatest growth potential. Your clients!

Compare mass marketing tactics to relationship tactics. Do things like print, TV, You Tube, websites, Twitter, or direct mail enable you to build one-on-one relationships? I would say, not likely. These provide brand recognition and are the hardest to measure, if measurable at all, unless of course you are Google or Apple.

What marketing tools can help build relationships?

Email is a communication and marketing tool. It is inexpensive, interactive, and data driven and most of all, it is easy to use. But there is a catch! You must be willing to build a relationship with your subscribers and nurture them over time. Communication builds relationships.

Keep your relationship positive by:

Determining frequency of how often and when to mail

Developing over the top content

Paying attention to client segmentation

Setting a tone by using a welcome message

Measuring, refining, testing and repeating

Thinking about quality not quantity

Inserting polls and surveys

Review your inventory and see what assets are growing your firm. A good “marketing allocation” model that includes email marketing might be just what you need.